Café Gray Deluxe: Hong Kong

What a shame Geoff and I found Café Gray Deluxe too late as we loved it and had we found it earlier we most definitely would have returned. Geoff had it on his list of ‘places to eat’ but we stupidly saved it for our last day in Hong Kong. We could have kicked ourselves as it was a million times better, in more ways than one, than our visit to Morton’s the evening before. Plus half the price!

Cafe Gray Deluxe

The concierge at our hotel managed to book us a table as we had tried online but none were available, so it’s worth ringing them to ask. At first we couldn’t find the restaurant but a very kind American chap asked if he could help us. We told him we were looking for Café Gray and knew it was near The Marriott. He happened to know exactly where it was as he was in fact, The Marriott’s general manager. He took us almost to the door and told us that we would enjoy Café Gray a lot. As most restaurants etc., are inside very tall buildings it can get very difficult to find where they are, even with a map. Café Gray is actually inside Upper House, a rather swanky hotel – designed by renowned Architect Andre Fu – which I’m sure we wouldn’t be able to afford to stay in. We were a little early so we sat in the bar area whilst we waited for 12. We were offered drinks but thought we’d wait and have it with our meal and so took the time to look out at the spectacular views of Victoria Harbour. We were on the 49th floor so as you can imagine, the views were fantastic.
We were shown to our table, almost in a corner so we had two large windows to look out. A couple of buzzards were circling outside.

Brunch menu

The brunch menu was 2 courses for 325 HK dollars, which is around £26 and three courses for 395, approx’ £35. I had the Blood Orange Mimosa to drink, which is puréed blood oranges, freshly squeezed orange juice, topped with bubbles. Very nice indeed.

Blood Orange Mimosa

We were given some wonderfully fresh seeded bread, which we greedily had two lots of as it was so tasty. This was served with yoghurt, olive oil and sprinkled with some herbs and dukkah. Now, I’ve never had bread dipped in yoghurt before but I must say that it was delicious.

Seeded bread with yoghurt, oilve oil & herbs

As I’d eaten so much food the past three weeks I thought I’d go for the healthy option of some fresh fruit. A bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted really. The Papaya & Mango Salad was indeed very fresh, beautifully presented and I did enjoy it, but it was what it was and after seeing Geoff’s soup I had a bit of food envy. Okay, a lot of food envy!

Papaya & mango salad

Geoff’s soup came and inside the bowl was a mixture of dry ingredients, hazelnuts, tiny tiny cubed pumpkin and goodness knows what else. The waiter then poured the hot soup over this. What a great idea. And it tasted divine.

Geoff’s pumpkin & hazelnut soup

Next I had the quiche served with a beautiful micro salad and skinned yellow and red baby tomotoes. How pretty it looked.

Quiche

The pastry was light and crisp and the quiche was topped with a few slices of onion, grated apple and sprinkled with crushed hazlenuts.

Pretty micro salad

Geoff had the Duck Cottage Pie. I asked him what he could say about it and he replied “a very interesting diversion of the traditional shepherd’s pie format into the world of poultry”. Jeez…why did I even ask?

Duck Cottage Pie

The potatoes were creamy smooth bordering on a mousse-like consistancy, the minced duck very lean and tender, no fat. Tiny cubes of carrots inside and topped with cranberries.

Cheese was tempting

Forgetting that I was trying to be healthy albeit a trifle too late, I just had to have a dessert. They all sounded rather nice but as it was Easter we both went for the Easter Rice Tart with almond nougatine ice-cream and vanilla Anglaise (custard to you and me).

Easter Rice Tart

A light crisp sweet pastry, the rice was fairly smooth and the tart was dusted lightly with icing sugar. The nougatine ice-cream was superb and topped with a rice toffee brittle (a bit like Rice Krispies inside the toffee brittle).

Chocolate!

When we thought it couldn’t get any better we were served with dark and milk chocolate, candied orange peel dipped in chocolate and a thin wafer. I couldn’t manage it all so I cheekily wrapped the rest up to eat later that evening on the plane home. We finished the meal off with an espresso each and the white and brown sugar cubes were individually wrapped.

The toilets were amazing! There were several places to sit at, each with a lamp and a large mirror to reapply your make-up or tidy your hair and the sinks were very modern letting out a wide stream of water. But the best thing were the views whilst washing/drying your hands! Incredible. The toilets were so good I had to visit them twice.

View from the toilets

In the background plinky-plonky music played and the service was top-notch. I looked at what the diners on the next table were served and it looked truly amazing. I do like good presentation.

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[…] matter to us. It was our last meal and evening together with Helen before Geoff and I headed to Hong Kong for a few days to break up our journey back to England and Helen was flying out to spend a few days […]